Warren Murphy: Midnight Man

40

enemies. Master Ding did so, but when he returned to collect his payment, he found that the Emir, who had retained him, had died peaceably in his sleep. His son, the new Emir, refused to pay, saying the debt died with his father. It has been owed ever since. Why do you look so surprised?"

"It was really a simple story," Remo said.

"Did I not say it was?"

"Yes, but you always say that, then you go on forever and you end with some proverb that is totally confusing," Remo said.

"I never confuse. You are always confused."

"What?"

"Exactly," Chiun said. "A wonderful demonstration of my point."

"Chiun, are you going to hold the Emir responsible for his ancestor's debts?"

"I do not know. He is not the present monarch of his country. On the other hand, if he wants to return to his thrpne, he can hardly make much of a moral case if he goes around refusing to pay his empire's just and righteous debts. I will have to decide."

"Let me know what you decide."

Chiun nodded, then stared straight ahead at the shoreline of the small island, toward which the Coast Guard launch was racing.

They dropped ashore, off the launch, on the uninhabited side of the island. The main house faced in toward shore, and Remo had decided that the best way to test security would be to try to get to the Emir without notifying anyone they were there.

They moved up the sloping sand dune and through the scruffy clumps of ocean grass noiselessly.

41

Chiun touched Remo's shoulder and when Remo turned, the old man pointed to a sound detector wired into a bush. Remo nodded. It was clumsy but probably effective against most. Of course it would not be effective against practitioners of Sinanju, for one of the first things learned, and one of the most important lessons drilled into his head by Chiun, had been moving noiselessly.

"When one is silent," Chiun had said, "he has time to repair his mistakes. And having watched you train, you will need all the time you can get." And then he had set out a trail of peanut shells and crumpled paper and glass marbles and forced Remo to run across them, at top speed, without making a sound. And when Remo had complained after days of training that grew into months, Chiun had said simply: "No one whips the silent dog. Run."

By the time they had reached the top of the rise and could see the large house, they had run across electrified fences, mine fields, electric-eye alert systems, and rolls of barbed wire. Remo was impressed. It had not stopped him and Chiun, but nothing would have. Basically, the security was not all that bad. If the personnel had any training, Remo might even rate security as good.

Finally, he and Chiun strolled across the hundred yard open field that led to the rear of the mansion.

A guard on the door saw them and Remo and Chiun could hear him shout inside the house. Eight members of the Emir's personal guard poured from the house and raced toward them, rifles and handguns at the ready.

"Halt," one of them ordered.

42

"Why does everybody say 'Halt'?" Remo asked Chiun. "Why not just say 'Stop'?"

"I always like what they say in police movies," Chiun said. " 'Hold it right there, pardner.' "

"You've got them mixed up again," Remo said. He was going to explain when he felt his ribs nudged by a rifle barrel.

He turned and addressed the man with the most braid on his comic-opera uniform.

"We are from the United States government, sent to assist in the security for the Emir."

"We were not informed that your government was sending anyone," the braided man said. He wore a flat-topped, pilot-type hat, and strings of greasy hair hung out from below the brim.

"We asked that you not be notified. We wanted to test your defenses for ourselves. As you can see, we are here."

Slowly, imperceptibly, the eight guards had surrounded Remo and Chiun.

"Where is a U.S. representative?" Remo said. "He can check our credentials."

"We are perfectly capable of checking your credentials ourselves," the leader said. "We do not appreciate this intrusion."

Remo raised his hands in a gesture of wanting to reason with the spokesman. "Now listen," he started. One of the guards mistook the raised hands as an act of aggression and swung at Remo with the stock of his rifle. No one but Chiun saw Remo move, but suddenly the man was sailing over the heads of the other guards. He landed, breathless but unhurt, in a clump of bushes.

43

"I don't want to hurt anybody," Remo said. "You will not hurt us," the leader said, although with more confidence than he felt. He looked behind him at his soldier, a hand-picked, trained soldier, slowly lifting himself from the bushes. He had not even seen the man move to touch the soldier. Yet he must have moved. Still, how had he managed to throw the man so far?

For a split second, there was a stalemate and then a woman stepped out onto the rear porch of the house.

She had long red hair and equally red lips. Her figure was full, but youthful, shown off neatly by a peasant blouse and a pair of designer jeans, which differed from non-designer jeans only by a label sewn onto the right rear waistband.

Remo heard someone whisper, "Princess Sarra."

The Emir's younger sister.

A Princess in jeans, Remo thought. It struck him as funny. The Emir had been overthrown by a lot of sloganeering, marching students, many of them women who had been allowed into college for the first time by the Emir's modernism. They too wore

Western garb and listened to rock-'n'-roll. And they had agitated for the Emir's overthrow, calling his regime "oppressive." They had finally gotten their wish. The Emir had left the country. It had been

taken over by a band of religious zealots who imme- We are-

diately prohibited women from wearing Western clothing. Women were also prohibited from attending college. When the ones who had protested the Emir's "oppression" had tried to march to protest these new rulings, they were beaten and raped in the

streets.

44

As the Princess Sarra approached them, Remo saw that she was no child, but a mature woman, probably nearing forty. But she walked erect, regally and proudly, and Remo felt a stirring inside himself that for a moment he could not identify as either respect or lust.

She caught his eyes and held them. A half-smile formed on her lips.

Remo nodded. He had decided. It was lust.

"Stand aside," she told the leader of the guards.

"But, Princess . . ."

"Go inside. Bring out the American agent in charge. Go now, fool, before these two men destroy my brother's vaunted Royal Guards."

The man bowed and backed off.

"Your name?" the Princess asked Remo.

"Remo."

"Only royalty has one name. Remo what?"

"Remo Schwartzenegger," said Remo. "And this is Chiun. One name only."

"Your companion?" she asked.

Remo shook his head. "Much more," was all he said. From the corner of his eyes, he saw that Chiun

, , . ..,„., , „. , . was pleased with the answer.

had agitated for the Emir s overthrow, calling his * . u. ,

. „ . „ „, u j « il m. +u • You claim to be representatives of your govern-

regime oppressive. They had finally gotten their vJ &

"We will see," Princess Sarra said.

They stood, eyes locked, and Remo could feel doors opening inside of him, doors that he had thought were closed for good. Princess Sarra had green eyes. Her waist was incredibly slim. Remo wanted to look at her bosom, but he felt that some-

45

how it would seem insulting. He looked anyway and

And short women.

fatandfifty- Churn's story.

"What's this, what's this?" the man demanded, approaching the group.

Princess Sarra eyed the man with distinct disapproval as he stopped alongside her.